Turning to Jesus Christ with Faith
24th Sunday after Pentecost
Ephesians 2:14-22; Luke 8:41-56
People, while living on earth and worrying about their various life affairs and problems, cannot avoid two phenomena: illness and death. Consequently, every city is concerned about having at least one hospital and a cemetery. Diseases, like death, are our constant companions in life. This is something we might not want to think about or talk about, but we cannot ignore. Neither hospitals nor cemetery workers are worried that they will one day be unemployed. We in Christ's Community inevitably have to reckon with the fact that our people also get sick and die.
Today’s Gospel story clearly shows that Christ had to deal with both a sick person and a deceased person at the same time. True, at first it seemed that it was only a seriously ill girl, the daughter of the elder of the synagogue, Jairus, but when Jesus stopped and spoke with the healed woman, the girl died.
Noteworthy in today’s Gospel presentation of the aforementioned bleeding woman is that she did not verbally address Jesus, but when that woman was cured from having touched Jesus' clothing, the Lord stopped. He felt her reaching out to Him by touch, the manifestation of that woman's great faith.
Because of that, even though he was hurrying to the gravely ill daughter of Jairus, Jesus had to stop in order that the great faith of the sick woman could be revealed and witnessed. "Daughter, your faith has made you well…” (Luke 8,48) -- this is what we should always remember.
And, of course, the matter was not in the clothes of Jesus, but in the grace of God, which emanated from Him as a manifestation of great faith. The Lord also, because of the great faith of the elder of the synagogue, Jairus, resurrected his daughter.
In the Gospel, we have many stories about recovery: it happened when the ill or crippled themselves asked for healing; in other instances, it happened when others asked on their behalf (when, for example, friends brought a crippled man on a stretcher, - Mark 2,3), and sometimes Jesus Christ showed mercy and healed those people for whom no one made any request - as, for example, in the case of the healing near Bethesda (John 5:1-15).
In that case, a man, who lay paralyzed for 38 years, could not have known about Jesus; so the Lord came and extended to him the grace of God. But with all His actions of healing, recovery, resurrection, as well as the creation of other miracles (such as a miraculous catch of fish, feeding more than five thousand people with five loaves), the Lord wanted people to know and believe in the truth that He is the Christ, the Son of God. The affirmation of that faith was necessary not simply for the personal glorification of Jesus Christ, but for the founding of the Church of Christ. That was to become the foundation, the cornerstone for that Church, the new religion and faith.
The Apostle Paul in The Epistle to the Ephesians, in the passage that is read today in the church, taught new Christians that they are united, "built on the basis of the apostles and prophets, where the cornerstone is Jesus Christ, in whom the whole building, power is built, grows into a holy temple" (Ephesians 2:20-21).
The church was to be founded on the true faith. Therefore, when Simon Peter said to Jesus: "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!", the Lord told Peter that "My Heavenly Father" revealed that truth to him (Matthew 16:16-17). And He further said that on that faith of Peter: "...I will build My Church - and the forces of hell will not overcome it." (Mt. 16,18)
From the beginning, from the apostolic times to the present, we have based our faith in Jesus Christ, as the Son of God and our Lord. When the prison guard asked Paul and his colleague Silas what to do to be saved, they immediately answered him: "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household " (Acts 16:31). And that faith in Jesus Christ as the Lord was a sufficient basis for the fact that the apostles baptized the prison guard and his entire family, all the “household” as is written in The Acts of the Apostles. And the same faith remains unchanged today.
When some (like those in certain sects) say that they accept only that Jesus Christ is the Divine Teacher, and not the Lord, not God in a human body, then they cannot belong to the Church of Christ, they can only be somewhere on the sidelines of the Church.
Jesus Christ clearly expressed and called his disciples: "Believe Me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me" (John 14:11).
The woman who touched Jesus and received a sudden healing may not have known the literal definition of who Jesus Christ is, but she knew that for 12 years she had been treated by human physicians, had spent "all that she had [on them], and was no better but rather grew worse," as the evangelist Mark testifies (5:26).
And that woman knew that no one could help her, only Jesus of Nazareth, who has the power of God. Therefore, she placed Jesus above all earthly doctors; and, therefore, although she did not express it in words, through her faith she knew the truth and said: "If I touch even His garments, I shall be made well" (Mark 5:28). If the Jewish high priests, elders, and scribes had managed to demonstrate such faith as that bleeding woman, they would not have been God-fighters and crucifiers, but confessors of Christ.
Jesus Christ is not physically on earth, but He continues to heal people. People who receive the Holy Communion with faith "for the health of soul and body" – are truly healed by Christ.
Those people who kiss, touch the image of the Lord's cross with their lips with faith, can also receive the power of God for healing. In our life, full of various weaknesses and diseases, we need to touch and feel Jesus Christ, we need His healing power and grace both to heal our infirmities and to overcome difficult circumstances. The Lord will be with us when we touch His image with faith, when we put our hope in Him. Let us not forget the words of Our Lord:
“‘And behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age.’” (Mt. 28.20)
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.